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System Change Not Climate Change
After being in Copenhagen for five days now, there are some thoughts running through my head that I'd like to express and share with y'all. This is going to be short, and probably not all that eloquent, but it will help me get some points across that I think are really important at this critical moment in the fight for our climate. I do want to say that while this post is critical of the way things are happening at COP15, I still deeply respect the youth of all delegations who are inside this conference, trying to scrap out a decent deal for the world. I thank them for all their efforts, but am coming from a different perspective here.
I came to Copenhagen hesitant and nervous....not wanting to place too much hope into the talks that had effectively been castrated by the UNFCCC leadership and Yvo de Boer. But I still wanted to be here all the same; after all, it's supposedly the climate party of the century! So I hooked up with some French activists and an amazing organization called Climate Justice Action and planned on doing all that I could during the two weeks of the conference. I wanted to rally, protest, take part in negotiations, have my voice heard and above all- help bring a fair, ambitious and binding treaty out of Copenhagen. But upon arriving in Denmark, I entered a catatonic state of dumbfoundedness...having finally come to the realization, like so many others (James Hansen, Breakthrough Institute etc), that these talks were doomed to fail and there was nothing anyone could do about it. As quickly as it had come, my dream of that fair, ambitious and binding treaty that we've all been working towards disappeared in a smoggy cloud of yen, dollars, euros and political and moral weakness.
Since 2006, I've been a part of the youth climate movement and I always believed that it was possible to achieve the sort of change we needed through the United States Congress, the United Nations Conference of Parties or other governmental bodies. To put it short and use that worn out term, I believed in "the system". I believed that governments did have the power to stop climate change and did in fact want to stop climate change. I thought COP 15 would be a conference of folks dedicated to doing whatever was necessary to solve the climate crisis, regardless of money, corporate influence or politics.
I was wrong.
The first five days of the conference have been full of back door dealings by Annex 1 countries, oppression of "developing" countries like Tuvalu by official delegations and a lack of desire for a legitimate deal in Copenhagen by members of the US delegation. So, even with tens of thousands of people working on a global climate treaty for the past fifteen years, we have yet to reach any sort of legitimate, legally binding treaty that addresses climate change and climate justice while refusing to give into corporate and big business pressure. You would think that when you put the world's top negotiators, scientists, governmental representatives and UN hot shots together for 15 years, they'd at least be able to figure something out right?
What's the *#&$#@&!^ problem?
The answer is simple. Capitalism is the problem. Our global economic system is the problem. This "profit above all" attitude that we've been working with since the dawn of Adam Smith and modern economic system will no longer work if we want to continue living on this Earth with our fellow brothers and sisters. The evidence towards this is numerous and incontrovertible. Take this astounding fact for example. There have been two occurrences in the past twenty years when carbon emissions have not skyrocketed upwards, and have even dropped a little bit. The first was in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the former Soviet eastern bloc country's economies essentially all collapsed. That bloc lost 40% of their production capacity, and thus, their carbon emissions went down 40% , a significant amount. The second time when global carbon emissions have not continued on their hasty flight up was this past year, during the "global financial crisis", when emissions slightly leveled off due to the slow death of many parts of our modern economic system. Let this example be a wake up call, let it motivate you, make you angry and make you want to act!
With little more than a week to go in this conference, I don't know what sort of hack deal will be put on the table. I don't know if it will help protect small island states or fragile economies threatened the most by climate change. I am pretty sure it will be extremely lenient on big polluters like the US, India and China. My only hope is that the coming actions and demonstrations organized by the Climate Collective and Climate Justice Action will show the determination and passion of real people dedicated to real system change to confront the awful truth of climate change and tell the fat cat delegates from rich, polluting countries what this world really needs: SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE!
from Copenhagen with love and solidarity
- Posted in
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47 Comments so far
Show AllFrench is wrong. Climate Change must only be about Climate Change, otherwise people will think it's not real.
Hey Jake-- What you are saying is akin to "weight gain/obesity has no links to diet." Climate Change is a symptom of the Sick System. C'mon, you need to look at things a lil more holistically... Addressing and treating just the cough won't cure the cancer. i can type out a million more medical metaphors if it pleases you...as they are apt. we are dealing with life and death situations.
Even if true, linking Climate Change and Capitalism will *lose* political support. Many deniers are already claiming that Climate Change is just a way to impose a world government, or redistribute wealth, etc. They should just stick to the science or they will fail.
I disagree that trying to win over the Deniers should even be a goal of Movements for action on Climate Change.
The goal should be to win over those in between the Denier-advocates and the Change-activists. The billions of people that find the case for AGW either compelling or doubtful, but can only imagine or afford backing action on the issue if it includes tangible gains for they and their families and not tangible losses.
I would agree that making the thing about a dogmatic argument between Capitalism and some other economic scheme would be a mistake.
But merging climate change arguments with arguments for a more socially just economic system than the one we have today would only INCREASE its cache.
People who are ideologically opposed to anything other than absolute "free" market Freidmanism are like British Loyalist during the Revolution, they are a lost cause and we shouln't waste time trying to convert them when we should be fighting them.
-matti.
"The goal should be to win over those in between "
So it would seem.
"But merging climate change arguments with arguments for a more socially just economic system than the one we have today would only INCREASE its cache."
If you mean "socialism", maybe in Europe but not in the US.
Most Americans believe that any democratic government SHOULD work in the interest of the many over the few; the reality, as many on the right and left acknowledge, is that our "democracy" doesn't.
However, in America, having long been told to accept democracy = capitalism, many people don't see these egregious violations of democracy as anything but aberrations of capitalism. Thus, many people end up blaming the New Deal or socialism rather than capitalism for America's unfair government.
"Most Americans believe that any democratic government SHOULD work in the interest of the many over the few;"
Thank you for your response. I'm not doubting you, but I wonder if you could tell me where you get this from. The problem I see is that some *individual* or group is given the power to interpret what the so called "common good" is.
"having long been told to accept democracy = capitalism,"
Who is doing this telling? I don't recall being told this and I don't believe it to be true.
"Thus, many people end up blaming the New Deal or socialism rather than capitalism for America's unfair government."
I believe that *life* is unfair, and that it's not the job of government to try to make it fair. That said, a given government program should be administered fairly.
"Most Americans believe that any democratic government SHOULD work in the interest of the many over the few"
This is implied directly in multiple speeches by US political leaders (formalized in the populist tradition in US politics starting in the 1880s, but had earlier roots probably dating back to at least Lincoln's speech "government of, for, and by the people").
"having long been told to accept democracy = capitalism"
Long been a staple of US education since at least Cold War; only capitalism can bring freedom and democracy; socialism can only bring totalitarian domination. I don't believe this either, but a good number of Americans do.
"I believe that *life* is unfair, and that it's not the job of government to try to make it fair. That said, a given government program should be administered fairly."
This is where we differ. Life is unfair, but it's the duty of every man to make it less unfair and more hospitable; by extension, if you or your organization have the power to make it less unfair (the government, for example, certainly has this power), but you fail to do so, then you betray your duty to your fellow man and the responsibility inherent in having your power.
"This is implied directly in multiple speeches by US political leaders "
I don't see speeches by politicians as any indication as to what citizens believe, so I disagree. I would much prefer a proper survey as evicence.
"Long been a staple of US education since at least Cold War;"
You are just restating the original. Where is the evidence? I don't recall this in my curriculum at all.
"This is where we differ. Life is unfair, but it's the duty of every man to make it less unfair"
Thank you for clarifying. Yes we do disagree on what you say here, and I guess you think this extends to government which is what I was originally talking about. I wonder if you can say where this belief of yours stems from, thank you.
How do you know that? You had better hope that the Socialist French show us their way to socialize before the Chinese show us how they handle liberals.
There is no credible evidence that I see for any movement to European style sosialism in the US, or of political support thereof.
Dangerously wrong. Here in America we already can't get HALF the population to take GW seriously because they think its a communist plot. Along comes French and says it IS a communist plot. Perfect...
Youthful enthusiasm on the part of French perhaps.
I agree with the premise that capitalist do not care to be part of a global solution, mainly because it is set in a competitive and not collaborative ecosystem.
However, capitalism does respect standards. As it makes their product requirements easier to match with what the market will buy. COP15 must deliver requirements, before capitalists can be lead by its nose ring , dangling standards of products which regions will buy.
Where will standards come from in this case of mitigating climate catastrophe ? Could be regional ( EU, NA, SA, ASEAN etc. ). It is not easy to reach standards, but by having COP15 requirements will make this task easier to reach.
At least , capitalist would like to see same standards everywhere on the globe as oppose to country by country.
Push hard in Copenhagen.
toophat for you!
Jake--While the Soviet Union and other socialist countries did not do much for maintaining a clean environment (just check out what happened to Lake Baikal)the current corporate capitalist mindset of profit over everything else is certainly an evil that needs to be eradicated. I do think we can agree that we have limited amount of time to get under that magical 350 tipping point. If the capitalist mindset is to make profit, how do we make it profitable for them to save the planet from environmental defeat? If the iron law of capitalism is to make more money in 2010 than you made in 2009 and you are willing to screw over your grandma to do so... we might be doomed.
"the current corporate capitalist mindset of profit over everything else is certainly an evil that needs to be eradicated."
An idea that will never get political traction in the US and other places. Thanks for your response.
whoa!!! - the USSR and China were never true socialist countries, they were just dictatorships and oligarchies of a different form. Real, genuine socialism has never been actualized in our known history on any large scale that I know of.
I take issue with this author who blames capitalism alone as the reason for climate change. Climate change did not come from mankind alone although mankind could helped avert it. We could have had a capitalism with more truly green jobs rather than keeping people divided on economy vs environment. For example, if we had replaced coal mining and oil drilling jobs with truly green jobs such as building solar panels from hemp and not fossil fuels, we would still have capitalism in place but then we wouldn't be having the kind of "climate change" for which it to put the blame on capitalism.
Jake Newton, you are correct that climate change and capitalism have no business being tied together in a negative sense. Al Gore and T Boone Pickens are making big business out of their doom and gloom calls on global warming but neither one of them are actually putting forth solutions such as industrial hemp to replace fossil fuels. Pickens is in fact a slick green washer using wind mills to window dress his hidden support of nuclear and fossil fuels.
" correct that climate change and capitalism have no business being tied together in a negative sense."
I'll clarify: Even though I think it theoretically possible to link them negatively as you say, I don't beleive it to be the case. My main point was regarding the politics of doing so.
Right. It was all those polar bears smoking cigars in the Arctic that caused
climate change.
People are pure as the driven snow--no blame there--which BTW is melting even as I type this, and it´s winter!
We could have socialism in place of capitalism and the same thing would have happened. I wish polar bears well but there are better ways of saving them than lousy international talks and mere greenwashing.
Max, who anointed you to make predictions about a socialism which has yet to occur except in embryonic form?
Who told you that you know the way to save anything?
I am really tired of folks who post nonsense and just clog the communicative channels when time is running out--not for the PLANET--but for us and the polar bears who live on it.
I will tell the bears that YOU have the answer: Baptism, which they will receive very soon en masse, and not smoking.
It´s almost too late for you to educate yourself.
The solution to GW is simple. The solution to capitalism? Not simple. I believe its socialized capitalism: not far from capitalism, but with healthy progressive taxation (to prevent the wealthy from usurping the democracy), and significant government oversight of capitalism (and public oversight of government). And, though we hate to admit it, we've come to a point in human history where significant government controls over commerce must exist beyond our immediate borders. This isn't 'one world government', but something is needed, or financial pirates will continue to murder the innocent and escape across the border.
But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The Communists trashed their own countries back when. Capitalism certainly is a roadblock but it is not the central problem. If it was profitable to clean the air and water u can bet Capitalism would do it. Unfortunately, its not so this has to be handled largely by Gov'ts who can make it very expense to pollute if they want to. They don't want to.
Young people in America have just been handed the result of three decades of free-market ideology: a $12 trillion national debt, an economy in free-fall, a hollowed-out manufacturing sector, and a climate catastrophe obvious enough that Lyndon Johnson warned Congress about it in 1965. Unregulated markets are easily corrupted by the powerful, after which they aren't exactly 'free'. The only way to keep them free is to regulate them to stay open.
The 'free-market' evolves to elevate the corporate 'person' above all other individuals as the producer of goods and services. The corporate 'person', however, is large enough to subvert the markets it trades in, which is HARDLY in the spirit of Adam Smith. Consider for example, the personal computer. At this point in history, Microsoft tells you what you can have, and you bend over and take it. That's not a free market; its just where a free, unregulated market takes you. Take Healthcare (oh, lets not even go there).
Free-market ideology supported a culture of tax cuts that released huge sums of money to the individuals who own corporations. The wealthiest 1% of Americans used to own 20% of America, before Reagan. Now, they own almost 50% of America. And that ownership is ownership of corporations. The corporate 'person' is a mask behind which are the wealthiest people in the country. The crime that has befallen this country is THEIR crime, done for their benefit (and BOY have they benefitted).
Don't hate capitalism for something free-market ideology did to you. Fix your capitalism. It was fixed for FIVE DECADES (1930-1980), after another generation got a taste of what free-market ideology had in store for them. What a shame America has to repeat its own, hard fought history.
Sioux Rose
UBREW: Excellent post. You add much to this forum. Thanks.
Thank you. So you do. I enjoy reading your posts. I know mine tend toward histrionic.
If you think you can FIX The System, I still do have a couple of those oceanfront lots in Nebraska you might like to buy.
A great hedge against Climate Change....
That's what they said in the '30s (and who could blame them?). Two decades later they were all trying to explain to McCarthy why they would join a communist party that was trying its best to nuke us.
It looks like the end of the world, but we just need to tax the h*ll out of the wealthy (first we have to locate their wealth, which is international), cut defense spending, get out of foreign entanglements, and put the new tax dollars into debt retirement, social spending, jobs, and, of course, green energy. REAL healthcare reform (single payer), REAL progressive taxation (to prevent the wealthy from coopting our airwaves and our congresspersons ever again), will help.
The problem is 30 years of wealth-promoted propaganda that's infected both parties, all of Wash DC, and half the nation. That's where the young come in. Its good that they see that Obama is Obummer, and that both parties are scr*wed up. They need to push for a new fix and take down the old order. But, when successful, it should be merely to reestablish what we had in 1930-1980, and make sure the Reagan Age is completely reversed. Europe is a good model of how we should be, I think, esp Scandinavia.
I don´t agree, obviously.
The System is in place to serve a handful of fabulously wealthy folks who also control the US government and its military.
I suggest you read the longer post I wrote at the top of this thread.
Maybe you'll see where I am coming from.
I returned very late last night from a quick trip to Arizona to see an ailing cousin who is younger than I am--and was appalled that everybody in her part of town seemed to be just hooked up to one or more machines in their houses waiting to die.
Every trip to the States--usually very 6 months--I see less functional infrastructure and more non-functioning people.
I think you guys are definitely on the way out.
I have proposed a mode of environmental activism that moves us beyond capitalism but avoids the error pointed out by ubrew12: throwing the baby out with the bathwater. See the following video:
Reorienting Environmentalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJRA0F7VEfA
I watched the video but I don't exactly see how your strategy avoids ubrew's trap. Having a larger goal in mind and ensuring the necessary party discipline to prevent foolish political alliances and misplaced trust is necessary for any movement, but I don't see any concerted program in mind.
Let's say we wanted to aim for that 50% reduction in CO2 consumption you mentioned in the video. Explicitly, what sort of tactics do you (or the others on here) would think appropriate? What would be considered adventurism?
I construed the baby/bathwater trap as the wholesale rejection of capitalism. (One sign at Copenhagen read: "Save the Planet, Scrap Capitalism".) While I'm convinced that capitalist LOGIC must be replaced, I believe that its institutions should be allowed to evolve, thus permitting useful institutional "babies" to be retained.
The example in my video is a 50% reduction in overall consumption, not CO2. I chose this because consumption in the rich countries is a critical cause of humankind's fundamental ecological problem - overshoot. Excessive CO2 is an extremely serious symptom of overshoot, but it is only a symptom. My main complaint about standard environmentalism is that it focuses on such symptoms while ignoring the underlying disease.
The key tactic is to shift activism away from the environmental effects of capitalist logic and to attack this logic itself. Using the alternative economic method I suggest, we should determine explicitly what the economy's levels of consumption, waste generation, resource utilization, etc. should be. We should then strive to achieve these objectives with legitimate actions.
The criterion I specified in the video re. adventurism should suffice for broad discussion.
I agree that The System is the problem. Climate change is just one more stop along the road to oblivion.
And every time you VOTE you are pedging allegiance to The
System.
Every time you buy the bullshit that all the millions of cancers that have developed in the US since the 1940s are the result of smoking cigarettes, you validate The System.
The Manhattan Project began in 1942 in New Mexico--on San Ildefonso Pueblo reservation land. Handford´s reactor went up in 1944--on Yakima land.
The biggest blast of uranium mining and milling took place on Navajo land.
Other stories are similar across Native America.
Before you think you´re safe, you need to understand that Native Americans who died and are still dying were just the canaries in the mine shafts, and due to contamination of aquifers, rivers, soil, and WINDS, there is almost no spot on colonial US territory that has not been affected.
The settlers drop like flies from the radiation caused cancers and other immune system damaging diseases--and have since the 1940s. YOU, unless you are a plutocrat lurking here, too will probably have the same experience.
Stop being stupid and presuming privilege under The System.
You are just as disposable as I am.
That´s what makes us WE.
And WE are all going down together unless you stop thinking that you, as a white person of Euro origins, will escape the latest Final Solution.
You won´t.
And thanks to you, neither will I.
WE won´t.
Get it yet?
Every time I vote I am not pledging allegiance to the system.
You are just kidding yourself.
Every time you vote you are saying it is okay to be handed a menu of pre-selected Tweedledee and Tweedledum to choose from--both anointed by Big Guns, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Big Banks.
In short, you "vote" to institutionalize Big Bucks as your masters, as well as the planet´s masters.
Folks like you are dangerous.
"Folks like you are dangerous."
Not for voting they aren't.
OTOH, your apparent voluntary disenfranchisement is astonishing.
Really?
Native American voluntary ANYTHING is so shocking to you?
Why would I vote? Citizenship was forced on natives in order to finesse the treaties broken by the US by saying we were no longer members of sovereign nations.
I don´t live in the US-and absentee ballots are not counted in elections--so even if I were a patriotic scoundrel like you appear to be, my vote wouldn´t matter.
You people probably deserve whatever catastrophe befalls you--for your unmitigated obtusity and pathological racism.
Stupid racists are always dangerous.
You call me racist even though I never brought up race in any way whatsoever. That makes *you* the racist.
Darkness:
*plonk*
Google expands tracking to logged out users
http://joshfulton.blogspot.com/2009/12/google-expands-tracking-to-logged-out.html
Humanity MUST live sustainably, or else suffer catastrophe. But sadly, it has to be the latter, for it is politically IMPOSSIBLE to do anything to avert the coming catastrophe.
----------------
The article has correctly identified capitalism (big business and profit) as the first enemy of sustainability. Thsey rule our parliaments and our media, and of course they will fight tooth and nail against sustainability. But that is not all...
----------------
A sustainable lifestyle would require us to de-industrialize. At the VERY least, a sustainable lifestyle means giving up the motorcar. Now try to tell Joe Sixpack that he has to give up his car, and see how far you get. If you try to point out global warming, I guarantee they will adopt climate change denial.
I ask you:- Which is the most attractive theory? a) one that requires giving up our western lifestyle and adopting a more third world one, or b) climate change denial. And option b) has been given false legitimacy by scientific obfuscation by big oil and coal.
Oh.., and to help with the climate change denial, we have religion. Christians that I know have stated to me that "God will provide". Why bother with sustainability, when God will take care of things for us? (if we just all attend the right church)
The government who advocates de-industrialization, is basically advocating economic catastrophe. Such a politician will be thrown out on his hear in no time.
A person who make the choice to live sustainably while the rest of society does not, will be regarded as backwards and marginalized in no time. A single state of the USA who made the choice to live sustainably would soon find itself being powerless and marginalized.
So being forced to adopt a sustainable lifestyle is POLITICALLY UNACCEPTABLE to the masses.
------------
Now let us look at it from the point of view of a nation. The Australian Aborigines, and the American Indians lived sustainably. What did we do to them? It was so easy to outgun people living a sustainable lifestyle. Now, any nation that goes down the path of sustainability would not be able to defend itself against an industrialized one. Which nation is going to de-industrialize first? For the USA, it would mean giving up its empire, for starters.
So it is in every nations long term interest for us all to change, so long as we all do it together. But it is not in the interest of any nation to de-industrialize in the short term.
You're on the right track, but you got the wrong culprit. State-controlled Capitalism is but a symptom of a far larger and more-ingrained "system" that controls this and every other debate on the planet. The real system is not economics, but militarism, a persistent, continuous militaristic dominance of the global system by the US military.
Yes, we cannot have a just and sustainable economic system based on Capitalism, but we cannot have a just and sustainable world order based on a domineering and self-righteous militarism. Capitalism did not breed the awful justification of militarism and war that Obama defended in his "War Prize" speech; militarism did.
And to tell the truth, your pessimism notwithstanding, it will be far, far easier to get a good agreement in Copenhagen or any other cities where such conferences may be held over the next ten or twenty years than it will be to change the militaristic system that supports, underlies, and encircles everything in the US.
Sioux Rose
DAYAHKA: Exactamente! Thank you for seeing through "Mars rules."
Yea "Change". As you said in the title.
But change what ? "the system" is a bit vague.
What we need to change is EVERY basic assumption underlying American culture.
Starting with our cultural supremacy. Modern beliefs in American cultural supremacy and superiority are just more of the same old White supremacy racism we have always lived with. It's as ugly as ugly gets.
At the core of our current culture is the twisted idea of "worth" and "value". Our priorities and neurotically misaligned.
We have to realize that as a culture and as a people we are sick.
mentally, and spiritualy, and also physically sick.
As sick as any culture and people on earth have ever been.
It seems earth itself is going to have to do an intervention.
"Let this example be a wake up call, let it motivate you, make you angry and make you want to act!"
A.A. French
If we want to make an impact, we can stop eating meat.
Factory farms contribute more to climate change than transport according to recent Pew Commission and UN studies.
Farmed livestock is responsible for 40% more than entire transport combined: cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships.
Meat-eaters add 7 times more to greenhouse gases than do vegans.
Are you doing your part?
jbentham
Paradigm shifts are notoriously difficult to describe before the fact.
but the point about consumption made by one of the contributors above is stellar, and if we acted on it--if we flat-out cut our consumption by half in this country alone--then we would have a chance first-hand at the desparate attempt to create viable new economic paradigms to fit. and since that is what we are going to have to do anyway if we wish to pull through the crises at hand we might as well get started, yes?
Yes, paradigm shifts - how we think about our world which will change how we see it - necessary, and difficult if one has ever tried to do this themselves.
Even harder, to change an entrenched system that is making so many people rich.
Americans are basically sheep in majority. Don't look to us to change that system. but we can be forced to change if the rest of the world does, and just refuses to let us play, or isolates those who still want to play, say...in their own country!!! yeah, right.
Capitalism is definitely the culprit - a system where greed, having more, haves and have nots, are inherent. Precludes even considering nature except to be exploited.
WE ARE THE ENDANGERED SPECIES> IT IS OUR HABITAT THAT IS THREATENED>
See that and ...sproing...see differently.